Empathic and Numerate Giving: Donor responses to charity effectiveness and impact
\(\rightarrow\) How will potential donors respond to this ‘analytical’ information?
Energise effective giving? or Switch off empathy?
\(\rightarrow\) (How and when) should charities advertise their impact/$?
The question
What previous research suggests
What we’ve done and what we’ve found
What we’d like to do
\(B(G_i)\): Beneficial outcome achieved by charity \(i\) with total donations \(G_i\)
ULTIMATE outcome
Actually, “output per $” \(\times\) “impact per output”
… what GiveWell and ImpactMatters attempt to measure; Strong evidence that this varies greatly!
From GiveWell calculations:
Behavioral Economics idea/ideal: “impact-altruism”
‘Innumerate empathy?’… cognitive biases, barriers to effectiveness
‘Dual process’ - fast/slow thinking; ‘spontaneous generosity vs. deliberative self-interest?’
Relational models … ‘market vs sharing norms’
‘Motivated reasoning’, excuses not to give; double-edged
‘Signaling’ empathy vs effectiveness
Driven by System-1 empathy, switched off by analytic thinking
Small, Lowenstein, Slovic (2007):
[Study 3] “individuals who faced an identifiable victim donated more…”
“…than those who faced victim statistics, p < .01,”
…“than those who faced [both] an identifiable victim [and] statistics, p < .05.”
Small et al, ’07, Study 4
Priming analytic thinking reduced donations to an identifiable victim relative to a feeling-based thinking prime.
Yet, the primes had no distinct effect on donations to statistical victims, which is symptomatic of the difficulty in generating feelings for these victims.
Yörük (2016, JEMS): RD w/ Charity Navigator; significant for ‘small’ charities only
2 x 2 mailing appeal for People with Aids Coalition-Houston
FINANCIAL (alone) \(\rightarrow\) 180% increase in odds of donating among prior donors (\(p<0.05\))
Adding scientific impact to appeal (& removing emotional text):
\(\rightarrow\) little net effect
\(\rightarrow\) reduced (increased) giving among small (large) prior donors
Actual charitable giving/asks
Field and ‘M-Turk’ settings with realistic contexts
2x2:
Measures of charity efficiency/effectiveness
Emotional-empathy-inducing images
Context (for studies 1-5)
\(\rightarrow\) final sample sizes: 398, 614, 611, 608, and 433 in Studies 1-5 respectively (variation tracking design complexity)
Payments: $1.50 ($2 in s4) baseline, Bonuses: $3 in S1-S2, $5 in S5, Raffle: $50 (1:25 odds) in S3-S4
Donation asks (from bonus) & treatments: 1 charity (or 2 in same category): Syria relief, Polio
Overall:
Strong positive effect of images on donation incidence, amounts
Little impact of effectiveness information on donation incidence, amounts
Connected to EssexLab 2019 Omnibus online survey
Given information about blindness in general
(Conditional) donation part
The ‘last’ Omnibus questions just before this
2 \(\times\) 2, “balanced blocked randomisation”, “between-subject”:
Control: description, choice (1/2 of subjects)
Info-treatment: description, choice (1/2 of subjects)
Limited power to detect differences in amounts donated or incidence by treatment
Image reduced donation (incidence and amounts) to Guide Dogs (fairly strong and significant effect)
And ‘increased’ donations to River Blindness, but not statistically significantly)
## `stat_bin()` using `bins = 30`. Pick better value with `binwidth`.
## `stat_bin()` using `bins = 30`. Pick better value with `binwidth`.
| treat_image | treat_eff_info | donated | don_gd | don_river | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image | Info | 0.537 | 0.168 | 0.368 | 95 |
| Image | No info | 0.505 | 0.147 | 0.358 | 95 |
| No image | Info | 0.511 | 0.213 | 0.298 | 94 |
| No image | No info | 0.532 | 0.245 | 0.287 | 94 |
Fisher tests: some donation
| estimate | p.value | conf.low | conf.high | method | alternative | Experiment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.919 | 0.884 | 0.498 | 1.69 | Fisher | two.sided | Effectiveness vs control |
| 1.134 | 0.772 | 0.617 | 2.09 | Fisher | two.sided | Effectiveness| Image present |
| 1.021 | 1.000 | 0.669 | 1.56 | Fisher | two.sided | Effectiveness (pooled) |
Donation incidence
| treat_image | treat_eff_info | donated | don_gd | don_river | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image | Info | 0.537 | 0.168 | 0.368 | 95 |
| Image | No info | 0.505 | 0.147 | 0.358 | 95 |
| No image | Info | 0.511 | 0.213 | 0.298 | 94 |
| No image | No info | 0.532 | 0.245 | 0.287 | 94 |
| estimate | p.value | conf.low | conf.high | method | alternative | Experiment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.05 | 0.91 | 0.67 | 1.6 | Fisher | two.sided | Effectiveness: RB |
| 0.97 | 1.00 | 0.56 | 1.7 | Fisher | two.sided | Effectiveness: GD |
| 1.38 | 0.16 | 0.88 | 2.2 | Fisher | two.sided | Image: RB |
| 0.63 | 0.09 | 0.36 | 1.1 | Fisher | two.sided | Image: GD |
Fisher tests: donated to Guide dogs/River blindness
Presentation coming up soon.
Spoiler warning:
Some positive effect of impact-related information
“Images work”
Image treatments can be effective at motivating giving, including impactful, efficient giving
“Info does not hurt, may help”
Analytic information about impact:
Does not seem to (strongly) decrease donations
May increase donations in some cases (Donor’s voice mailing; Karlan & W, Parsons work)
Mixed evidence on ‘efficiency info dampening the impact of identified victim images’
\(\rightarrow\) this may not be a ‘major barrier’ to promoting effective giving
Caveats: More power needed, cannot rule out substantial effects
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